GOP Campaign Strategy Targets Earmarks
By Alan K. Ota, CQ Staff
As a feisty, ambitious backbencher in the “Gang of Seven” in 1994, John A. Boehner worked with his top aide, Barry Jackson, to develop a list of conservative principles that would become the “Contract With America.”
Now House minority leader, Boehner has once again turned his attention to devising a conservative manifesto, with ending earmarks as its centerpiece. And again, there is input from Jackson, who is now a top political adviser to President Bush.
“We’ve had conversations for weeks,’’ said Boehner, R-Ohio. “Barry and I worked closely together back in the 1990s. And we’re working closely together now. We know each other. We trust each other. And we’re open with each other. He’s a perfect bridge for the administration for dealing with Congress.”
Boehner said he had also discussed priorities for 2008 with other top Bush aides he had worked closely with in the past, including Dan Meyer, a longtime lobbyist and a former top aide to former Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. (1979-99); and Bush’s budget director, former Rep. Jim Nussle, R-Iowa (1991-2007), who helped form the Gang of Seven with Boehner in the 1990s.
Boehner declined to discuss the details of the conversations but said he expects to develop a unified GOP position on earmarks in appropriations, tax and authorizing bills.
And any campaign-year agenda would need the blessing of the party’s presidential nominee, which was not a factor in planning the Contract With America in 1994.
“We’re working on priorities. And I expect we will work closely with the nominee on the prescriptions for fixing Washington,” Boehner said. “What form that takes and how it will occur has not been decided.”
Earmarks are expected to be a hot topic of conversation when House Republicans gather Thursday at the posh Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., for their annual retreat. GOP leaders will have to deal with a rift between members of their party who have grown fond of earmarks and a small but growing number of Republicans who are promising to stop asking for earmarks — and are expecting their colleagues to do the same.
Former Rep. Mickey Edwards, R-Okla. (1977-93), a manager for the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit education and research group, predicted that Boehner’s efforts to develop themes for 2008 could take months.
The Contract With America, he noted, emerged in the late summer, just before the 1994 election.
“It’s a fine line they have to walk. It’s hard to agree on a platform this early, when we don’t even know who the nominee will be,” Edwards said.
“Eventually, they may want to find 10 things they can agree on. On earmarks, they can probably agree on more disclosures and more votes on earmarks, in committee and on the floor.”
Campaigning Against Earmarks
In the meantime, conservative House Republicans are flexing their muscle on the topic of earmarks.
Jeb Hensarling of Texas, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, joined Mike Pence of Indiana and Jeff Flake of Arizona in their campaign for a one-year moratorium on earmark requests.
Flake has been the most vocal critic of earmarks in the House, and he is doing everything he can think of to force his colleagues to confront his earmarks ideas.
As part of his strategy, he is pushing to be considered for an open GOP seat on the Appropriations Committee, saying, “If Republicans said we’re just not going to earmark this year, there is absolutely no way that the Democrats could do so.”
Normally the leaders of either party would reflexively reject the notion of putting an earmark-hater on the committee in charge of so much earmark distribution. But the current atmosphere is full of question marks.
Flake has numerous competitors for the Appropriations seat, which Roger Wicker , R-Miss., vacated at the end of 2007 to replace Trent Lott (1989-2007) in the Senate.
Other Appropriations aspirants include Tom Cole of Oklahoma, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee; Dave Reichert of Washington; Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado; Jo Bonner of Alabama; Henry E. Brown Jr. of South Carolina; and Michael R. Turner of Ohio.
Even if Flake is turned aside this time, he can be expected to return and ask again at the end of the year, when there is more turnover in the GOP Conference and some appropriators will retire.
While Boehner has expressed interest in more limits on earmarks, he has been torn between mollifying senior Republicans who covet earmarks and more junior conservatives who abhor them.
He also has been cool to proposals for unilateral measures such as using Bush’s executive authority to ignore earmarks that have been written into committee reports but not into the actual text of legislation.
Liriel Higa contributed to this story.
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